Page 4 of The Christmas Retreat
‘Well, I need to know what you want delivered tomorrow, Ginny, don’t I? Seems like it might have changed.’
‘Delivered?’ I repeated stupidly. Could it really only have been a fortnight since I’d last seen Eli? But then I realized it must be, for it was ten long days since the accident, followed by Will telling me he was leaving for good, as I now knew he’d already planned to do, while he still could.
‘But the lockdown, Eli?’ I said. ‘I mean, we aren’t supposed to go anywhere or see other people, are we?’
‘You canseethem, Ginny, so long as you don’t gonearthem,’ he assured me. ‘And the hens keep laying – they don’t know any different – and I suppose we all still need to eat.’
‘I expect we do,’ I agreed, although I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever feel hungry again. Eating, since the day I broke up with Will, had meant brief fuelling stops, mostly cereal or toast, forced down with endless cups of Earl Grey tea. I was now running short on that, too; it was definitely time I pulled myself together.
Eli delivered eggs, honey and a box of vegetables every fortnight, although since Will had left soon after he’d brought the last one, most of it was still mouldering in the veg rack.
‘I saw a van go past over a week ago and wondered if you’d moved back to London to sit out the lockdown, but Josie said no, you were still here, but on your own.’
Josie was the postwoman … and in the country, however isolated you are, there are always people watching what you do. Or perhaps it’s just because itisso isolated that everyone takes a keen interest in the smallest details of each other’s lives?
‘No, it was Will who was moving his stuff back to London, and he’s not coming back.’
Eli regarded me for a moment, not without sympathy, then said practically, ‘So you won’t be needing two dozen eggs and the large veg box then?’
I shook my head. ‘A dozen eggs and a small one, please – and a jar of honey,’ I said, for, after all, Imightfeel like cooking and eating at some point, and Eli’s produce was all organic and far better than anything from a supermarket.
‘I’ll leave them on the step tomorrow, then. Put out any empty boxes for me.’
‘OK, and the money, of course. Do you want me to leave that in a bowl of vinegar?’
The sky-blue eyes stared at me. ‘Why would I want my money smelling of fish-and-chip shops?’
‘It’s what they did at the time of the Black Death. It was supposed to kill the germs.’
‘I think I’ll just take my chance with the money, thanks,’ Eli said. He made a note of my order in his notebook and then tucked it away in the front pocket of his dungarees, the pencil attached to it with a bit of string hanging over the top and swinging like a pendulum.
‘I was starting to worry that Will might bring the plague here with him when he came back for the weekends,’ I confided. ‘And I couldn’t understand why he was leaving it so late to move everything he needed here and start working from home, because I’m sure you can design computer games anywhere, even if the broadband here is a bit slow.’
I stopped, wondering why I was telling Eli all this, but it just sort of bubbled up and gushed out.
‘I witnessed a bad road accident a few days ago and … a woman died in it.’
‘Was that the one over near Old Warden?’ he asked with interest. ‘Nasty – they said in the local paper that the woman who died was a well-known artist, but I can’t say I’d ever heard of her and I’ve forgotten her name now.’
‘Annie Ashwin,’ I supplied. ‘I had heard of her, and also I once met her husband, the poet and bestselling literary novelist Rhys Tarn, at a publisher’s party.’
Of course, I hadn’t at the time realized hewasmarried …
I paused and swallowed hard. Realizing who the woman in the crash was had somehow made it all so much worse.
‘I came on the accident just after it had happened and she was still alive. It was a terrible experience, Eli. When I got home I was in such a state of shock that I tried to get hold of Will in London, to see if he could come home … andthat’swhen the fiancée of the friend whose spare room he’s supposedly been renting during the week told me he’d moved out months ago to live with another woman.’
‘Bastard,’ said Eli consolingly. ‘Didn’t deserve you.’
‘When he finally answered his phone, he said he’d intended moving out of the cottage that weekend anyway and would be bringing a van to take his stuff back. So I said he’d find it all in the garage and I didn’t want to see him.’
‘Better without him. He was a fish out of water down here,’ Eli said, which was true. Will had spent every weekend playing computer games or watching endless box sets and complaining that you couldn’t get take-away food delivered to Wisteria Cottage.
‘You give me a ring, Ginny, if you need help with anything.’
‘You are so kind – thank you!’ I said gratefully, feeling a sudden rush of hot tears to my eyes.
I blinked them back and managed another smile – or a near facsimile of one. I’d come to depend on Eli quite a bit since I’d bought Wisteria Cottage a few years before. He knew all the local news and was a fount of knowledge about gardening matters, while I had been a complete novice.
